Good toys for 16 month old wiht developmental delays???

[bugglemom]

My 16 month old has developmental delays. I'm trying to find good toys for him that would help with basic skill building (stacking blocks, putting things in containers, recognizing objects and animals, symbolic play, joint attention, etc.) His therapists all prefer toys with a minimum of (or no) lights and sounds. Any ideas?

[egoldber]

I got the PBK wooden alphabet blocks for my DD because she had some fine motor delays. They were much easier for her to stack than most other blocks I was able to easily find.

My DD really liked the Lamaze My First Fishbowl. Its good for putting objects in a container. http://www.growingtreetoys.com/product/4338 Another good one would be an older FisherPrice Shape Sorted called "My First ShapeSorter" of something like that. Its nice and simple and had no bells and whistles. You can find scads of them at most consignment stores.

The Lamaze stacking rings are also nice: http://www.growingtreetoys.com/product/4674

Sassy also makes lots of nice toys:
http://sassybaby.com/sassybaby/catalog.cfm?dest=itempg&itemid=160&secid=14&linkon=subsection&linkid=25
http://sassybaby.com/sassybaby/catalog.cfm?dest=itempg&itemid=264&secid=14&linkon=subsection&linkid=25

Stacking cups are a great basic toy that encourages fine motor development.

I think that hand puppets and finger puppets are terrific for kids of all ages and encourage imaginative play.

We used these Baby Einstein cards to encourage language and oral motor development: https://www.babyeinstein.com/Store/ProductListing.asp?Grouping=Category&ProductTypeID=5

[tbdw425]

Pretend dishes I found a set a ToysRUs for $10. Pretend food. Little People - It took my son a long time to try and figure out how to play with these appropriately, but at 30 mos. he is starting to make some progress. I suggest a Little People set the child can relate to. For example we did much better with the playground set and house than the barn (we live in a city). Also stringing beads and lacing cards for fine motor. A theraball (those exercise balls) are great for OT. Also for speech delay horns, whistles, whistle straws, harmonica. Check out Superduper.com and Abilitations.com. Note, the abilitations paper catalog is much better than the web site. Also small plastic animals. We have also had good luck with Hot Wheels track. It can be interactive, but you just have to avoid to much repetition or just letting it become watching a car going around and around and around...

[justlearning]

Regarding recognizing objects and animals, books seem to work the best with DS where we can put out pictures to him, say the word, then quiz him on it. We also have large wood blocks with two letters on each block as well as two pictures that start with each letter. These have been a great teaching tool with DS too.

As far as ideas for putting things in containers, I suggest giving your DS lots of different kinds of containers and providing a variety of things to put in them (e.g., little people, duplos, etc.). Right now DS's favorite container to put things into is an empty tissue box (the square type). He loves packing it full of everything that he can fit into it, then dumping it all out. I always like to save things like that rather than throwing them away--e.g., just tonight I saved an empty whip cream container so DS will get to play with that tomorrow. I think varying the type of container to put things into is fun for them and gives them the ability to recognize that they can only fit small objects into certain containers (e.g., an empty yogurt cup) vs. larger objects (e.g., balls) into bigger containers.